1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of access control systems. More particularly, the invention pertains to access control using radio-frequency identification and biometrics.
2. Description of Related Art
Ski areas need to verify that users of ski lifts have purchased valid tickets. What is typically done in most ski areas is that the ticket is manually inspected by a ski lift operator. Since the lift operator is also responsible for skier safety in using the lift, a second person will most likely handle the lift ticket verification. This manual process is labor intensive and generally does not provide satisfactory results. The inspections are usually cursory and the inspector is easily distracted, allowing many skiers through with no inspection at all.
Some ski areas have added automation to the process by having inspectors with hand held scan guns scanning the barcode on the lift ticket of those waiting on line. This process is better than manual inspection because the bar code will specify the date and duration of the ticket and if it is valid when scanned. The scan gun provides an audible signal if the ticket is not valid. This process is also labor intensive and during peak times, the inspector will just randomly scan some tickets while letting most skiers pass without scanning. Scanning also does not prevent the sweetheart fraud where the inspector will let their friends onto the lift lines without scanning their tickets.
With the introduction of high quality, low cost ink jet printers and paper scanners, bar coded tickets can be readily copied on these devices and printed on photo quality paper. The resulting copied ticket may not look exactly like the original but the copied barcode will scan the same as the original. The lift operators are conditioned to hear a “beep” to know that the ticket was properly scanned and do not spend any time visually verifying the authenticity of the ticket. This might make barcode scanning even worse than visual inspection for verifying ticket authenticity.
One of the most pervasive lift ticket scams being perpetrated on ski areas is unauthorized ski lift ticket transfers. A person may buy a lift ticket for someone else, but when that someone else uses the lift ticket at a ski lift, he/she becomes the owner of the ticket and is not allowed by legal code (in most states) to transfer that ticket to another person. Even though the transfer is illegal, it is difficult to enforce and is widely done by skiers that purchase lift tickets. As an example, a skier with bad knees that buys a full day lift ticket may decide to quit skiing during the lunch break and will offer the ticket to another skier who stayed up the night before and wants to ski only in the afternoon. For the ski area this is a loss of almost a full day's lift ticket revenue because afternoon lift tickets are only slightly discounted to full day lift tickets. Another example is a purchaser of a multi-day lift ticket that decides to ski for fewer days. He/she can resell the ticket to another skier who only wants to ski for the day that the ticket is not being used.
The situation is even worse for season passes that are offered at substantial discounts compared to single and multi-day lift tickets. There may be many days that the pass purchaser decides not to ski and will offer the pass to another skier who now does not have to buy a lift ticket. All of these unauthorized ticket transfers create a substantial revenue loss for the ski area.
Photos of persons authorized to use the lift tickets have been printed on the faces of season passes to help the lift operator verify that only authorized persons are using the lift ticket. This provides limited help because the photo on the season pass is relatively small and with the protective clothing worn by a skier, such as goggles or a ski mask that completely covers the face, it becomes very difficult for the operator to make any kind of positive identification of the skier and compare that to the miniature photo printed on the lift ticket. Other ways have been tried to make the identification of the skier easier such as scanning a bar code on the lift ticket and using the code to pull a photo of the skier from a database. This photo can be placed on a large monitor. Although this makes viewing of the photo easier, it does not make identification easier if the skier has the face covered with protective clothing. Most ski areas would consider it an affront to their customers if they asked them to remove items of clothing.
Other ski areas have automated the process further by installing gates and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to determine ticket validity. The RFID technology that is used at these areas is high frequency (HF). HF technology has a read range that is typically around 3 ft. The RFID inlays that are used in each ski ticket can add $1 or more to the cost of the ticket.
Some ski areas use ski lift access gates to verify ski lift tickets. These gates may use RFID technology to read the ticket at a distance, confirming the validity of the ticket with no skier intervention or they may use magnetic stripe technology requiring the skier to swipe the lift ticket through a magnetic stripe reader. These gates are all permanently fixed in a location. Typically concrete is poured and the gates are anchored in place.
It would be advantageous for ski areas to be able to move the gates to other locations to correspond to skier traffic. On a weekend when skier traffic is heavy, more gates can be added to busy lifts to keep the line moving. During the week when skier traffic is slower, it might make sense to move some of the gates to other parts of the mountain to collect data on the number of skiers using a particular lift. This is not possible with the construction of gates currently used for ski lift access.
Other RFID technologies, such as ultra high frequency (UHF) that provide a lower cost RFID inlay of about 15 cents and have a much longer range of up to 30 ft. have been tried but the results have not been satisfactory. Because of the longer range of UHF RFID, the reader at full power will read every ticket within its field of view. Even at reduced power, the reader has no way of differentiating tickets that are in close proximity, as would be the case if skiers are waiting in a line to access the lifts. Existing UHF RFID technology cannot locate the tickets in 3 dimensional space so the reader has no way of knowing which ticket is at the front of the line versus the ticket slightly behind or those to the side that are not in the lift line at all.